The top daily news from the cryptocurrency and blockchain space:
- Bitcoin hash rate reaches an all-time high.
- The Tether Treasury mints one-hundred million tethers (USDT).
- Bitmain sues former staff-turned-competitors for $4.3 million.
At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are trading at $9,195.2 (-1.4%) and $268.1 (-3.0%), respectively. As for the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, it is currently tracking at 4,295.7 (+0.4%).
Bitcoin Hash Rate Clocks New Record
According to data retrieved from Blockchain.com, the Bitcoin network hash rate topped 62 quintillion hashes per second last Friday. The term ‘hash rate’ refers to the amount of hashes – a function that converts an input of letters and numbers into an encrypted output of a fixed length – a miner finds, typically on a per-second basis.
Friday’s hash rate marked the highest-ever recorded on the Bitcoin network. The previous highest came almost a year ago on August 27, 2018.
The record comes at a period of relatively strong activity on the Bitcoin network. Indeed, the number of active Bitcoin addresses recently surpasses one million for the first time since November 2017.
Tether Treasury Prints $100 Million
On June 16 at 13:21 (UTC), one-hundred million tethers (USDT) – the equivalent of one-hundred million U.S. dollars – were minted by the Tether Treasury, the entity responsible for managing the supply of the widely used stablecoin.
In a recent newsletter by leading blockchain data analytics firm CoinMetrics, its team found USDT’s ERC-20 is rapidly gaining on its Omni (BTC) counterpart both in terms of transactions and active addresses.” Recently, the USDT stablecoin began being issued on each of the Ethereum, Tron, and EOS blockchains.
💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵 100,000,000 #USDT (100,000,000 USD) minted at Tether Treasury
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) June 16, 2019
Bitcoin Mining Giant Bitmain Goes After Ex-Staff-Turned-Competitors
Bitmain Technologies, a leading company within the highly competitive cryptocurrency mining segment, “is locked in a legal battle with three former employees who started a rival mining pool,” reported CoinDesk on Sunday.
The mining pool being sued is Poolin, a fast-emerging competitor to Bitmain subsidiary, BTC.com, the world’s largest bitcoin mining pool by hash rate. Notably, Bitmain is seeking $4.3 million worth of damages from one of the Poolin co-founders, whom it alleges violated non-compete agreements.
According to the former employees of the cryptocurrency mining giant, Bitmain voided the non-compete agreements by failing to pay each of them by the date that had been agreed upon.
